Position Statement

I am a passionate 2D animator who works both traditionally and digitally. What is important to me is creating compelling narratives centred around realistic characters audiences can relate to. I take inspiration in my visual aesthetic from classic Walt Disney Animated films and Studio Ghibli films. Outside of animation I also have a diverse portfolio of work including caricatures, gag cartoons and poster designs. Although I would describe myself as a primarily 2D based animator, what is most important to me when choosing a project is the content and the cause. So I do not limit myself, I am new into the industry and eager to learn to improve my practice. I have very much enjoyed experimenting with new techniques and materials and will continue to do so in the future. Working on Extended Practice has taught me that I should always be willing to take risks in my work and I'd like to continue to do that in whatever paid work comes my way. Throughout my three years at university I have made sure to develop my skills in specifically what I want to do. However, with a project like Extended Practice I took it upon myself to undertake all areas of the filmmaking process including editing and sound design. My skills do vary in these areas but I proved to myself that if I need to in the future I can take on extra tasks in the animation production.

Lifting Tower Brief

Initially I was skeptical about undertaking this brief. It sounded like a lot of fun but I was very aware of how much other work I needed to do at the time so was hesitant to take on another project. Mike encouraged me to stay and commit to the brief because he felt like it would be very beneficial to my practice.

Lifting Tower Concept Art

Lifting Tower Moodboard

Lifting Tower Initial Storyboard

The journey on this brief was not always easy and it definitely put my abilities to the test. But in the long run I felt I was very successful. We began the brief by working in groups of around six and in each group we had to come up with a pitch each to show to each other. then with these pitches we were to figure out how we could fit each of them into an around a minute in length animation. What came next did confuse me and I feel effected the workflow. We were then put into new groups as certain people decided to opt out of committing to the rest of the brief. I felt like this was a bit jarring as I was not prepared for this change. This change was made more jarring still because I and the others in the group essentially had to abandon our initial ideas that we had put time into developing, I for example had spent quite a bit of time and attention fleshing out the idea into a fully coloured storyboard. But to be able to work efficiently as a team we simply could not just stick to our fleshed out ideas because they were all too complicated and different.

Malachi, Callum and I were put into a group with Janice a third year illustrator. I was initially quite skeptical about being paired with an illustrator because going into the brief we were told that everyone was expected to animate. Luckily Janice had previously done some animation and i feel the quality of her animation was very high.

This experience of developing our animations was an incredibly rewarding experience to me because seemingly by accident I found myself undertaking a director role of the project. I found that everyone in the group was essentially happy for me to direct meetings and arrange meet ups. I felt like this would be a lot more stressful than it turned out to be and I think the reason for this is all the members of my group were incredibly easy going, easy to work with and eager to produce the best animations possible.

We did run into obstacles down the production line. My first bit of animation for the project was very poorly received and I essentially needed to start all over again. The reason for this is because I tried to do an animation with no line-work. I felt like this would test my abilities and was a chance for experimentation. As a first attempt it was okay, but it was not up to a professional standard and I felt like I had let my team down. But I produced another animation very quickly after and i feel like the second animation I produced was far higher in quality.

Plans for the Summer

I'd like to talk about what I am planning to do in the Summer. Of course I'm finishing my studies so it's not like I'm coming back in September. However I'd only like to talk about what I plan to do up till September.

• Finish my Grad Film
• I really want to finish this as I feel it's one of the best things I've made and contains some of the best footage I've ever animated. I don't just want to finish it because it's always nicer to finish a project you've laboured over for so much time and put so much love and attention into. but also because I feel like it has a lot of potential in being entered into festivals to get attention that way and just in general being shown to someone. I'm almost viewing it as the second most important thing I personally am coming out of university with, the first being the showreel.
• Continue to apply to studios in the North

• When recently applying to studios I've made sure to keep updating the above table I made. Obviously my 'Studios I still need to apply for' table is looking a little bare so I need to fill that up. But I will continue to write down any studios I like the look of and keep them in this table until I contact them. This system is already proving very helpful to me because if i don't write down the studios I've applied for I'll easily forget.
• When I say 'Studios I've applied for' I mean applied in terms of jobs and internships. Obviously I'd very much like a job, but to get another internship would be just amazing because I've really come to realise how excellent an opportunity an internship is. Matter and Co is not an animation studio yet I feel like I learnt so much about working in the industry there and about myself as a practitioner. That is why I am not only looking for jobs in the North of where I want to be living in September, but the South and really just about anywhere I can get to in the country.
• Take a piece of Pre-Existing Material and Animate it

• What I mean by that is Annabeth advised me that what would look very good in my showreel and something that would better sell myself as a 2D animating practitioner is to have some animation in my showreel that is still 2D but not necessarily in my style and in fact in someone else's altogether. She advised me to take something that already exists that is 2D and animate in that style. An idea she had was to animate Simon's Cat. This is the perfect opportunity to showcase a skill I rarely ever talk about. I feel I have pretty strong skills of replicating styles. I find it fairly easy to draw a character that already exists so I figure it shouldn't be too hard to animate a pre-existing character either
• 11 Second Club
• I am aiming to sell myself as mainly a 2D animator. However, I am coming out of university very skeptical of selling myself as just this. My skills do not necessarily lie in 3D animation, yet I still do have a great admiration of 3D. I may slightly prefer 2D as an art form and prefer to work in it, however I feel there are some amazing 3D studios I would still love to work at including Pixar and Blue Zoo. Furthermore, I feel like 3D animation has a lot of potential I am very interested to learn more about such as the ever increasing in popularity Virtual Reality. It is for this reason that I would like to animate an 11 Second Club using a pre-existing Maya rig. I am very passionate about creating nice flowing movement in human characters and i would very much like to improve my abilities in human movements such as lip syncing. So I definitely do not want to limit myself to just 2D.  

Cops and Daughters Grad Film

I didn't finish my Extended Practice animation in the module Extended Practice. But, I feel like some of the footage I produced for it is of the highest quality I've ever produced. Furthermore, the entire animation is of a quality that is consistently high. Obviously, I had to think about my time-management. I couldn't spend forever on minor details so obviously there are certain parts that I do not think of as perfect, however in general, the animation keeps to a nice consistency. In the past, I'd admittedly rarely ever finish an animation to my liking, usually for the reason of spending a lot of time over tiny details without thinking about my time management scaled up to the entire project. This meant that either a good quality animation would remain unfinished or I'd find myself rushing the animation close to deadline and even though I'd finish the animation, I would not be happy with the final product.

I'd very much like to finish my Cops and Daughters animation. In fact I'm definitely going to try to finish it by June 11th, of which our end of year show and exhibition week will commence. Furthermore, I want to finish it by this date so I can enter my animation into film festivals. I feel that if I complete the animation to a standard I have been working on it up till now, I think there is no way I wouldn't be able to enter it. Manchester Animation Festival is the main festival I have my eye on and the festival I feel is most appropriate for my animation that does deal with more mature themes. The deadline to enter an animation into this festival is around mid July so I'd really like to finish my animation within a comfortable margin of this date.

So how am I going to finish it in time?

Well, I have confidence that a month (or nearer three weeks) is a reasonable amount of time. One of the only other times I have committed myself to finishing my animation was for the Processes and Production module of which the deadline was January 2015. I finished all the line-work for that animation in time for the deadline but I had only coloured one scene. I really liked this animation and still do like this animation and at the time was advised that the entire animation would be a lot stronger if it was coloured entirely. Therefore I decided to commit myself to finishing the colouring of the animation, and I did... two years later. But this animation was a lot more complicated because filling was not as simple as just one click of a button that it is on Animate CC and the bulk of the time was not spent on colouring, but spent on shading of which apart from the background designs there will be none of in this animation, I have learnt my lesson.

In the recent time period of developing the animation I have definitely seen the rate of which the footage is being developed snowball and I've found that I've recently been able to produce footage faster and faster. I've animated Lucy at age 10, 13 and 17 now and I am confident in saying that I am now very confident with animating this character as I have become more confident with developing the different backgrounds in their different aesthetics. Furthermore, looking at my shots, the rest I have to animate although are high in number are all relatively straight forward. Lucy aged 10 is almost over and as she grows older and becomes more mature, she moves less, the challenging movements now are mostly walk cycles. Therefore I am hesitantly confident I can finish my animation.

Career Track Tuesdays: Interview Training Workshop

I went to the Career Track Tuesdays on how to act in interviews. I have been to interviews before so was not completely clueless about the process. However I felt like I could benefit from some practice. It's not like I lack confidence in the interview process, I think more the issue I have is when put on the spot I struggle to articulate exactly what I want to say then kick myself after for not having thought of it there and then.

What was most rewarding about this experience was the fact that it we had to act out the interviews ourselves. I did not know anyone else there so I felt like this was realistic to a real interview environment.

Visiting Professionasl: Bianca Ansems

Bianca Ansems is a storyboard artist at Cartoon Network. But being a storyboard artist is not her only skill and she specified to us that going into the industry that she only learnt then that she did not have to put herself under any specific label like that and it's okay to be more generalist. Her other skills include being a director, an illustrator, working freelance and as a stop motion animator. She worked an internship of five months and worked two weeks at Aardman Animation Studio.  She spoke very highly of her time doing work experience, she heavily encouraged us to be looking for placements saying that it was a great way of learning how to work in a team.

Bianca's talk was incredibly beneficial to me. In particular because she tailored it to us as students considering she was a student so was very sympathetic to us and very aware of keeping us informed about the things she did not know when she was going into the industry. In particular, her insight into free-lance work was incredibly beneficial to me. Working freelance is something that I think will be inevitable, however I am very skeptical about going straight into freelance immediately after uni. And up till this point, I have been advised to find work in a studio first. Bianca however did talk up being a freelance animator because she said it can be an incredibly rewarding career if we go about it in the right way.

Max Ardron Presentation Boards

Final Presentation

Max Ardron Portfolio of Stills

Life Drawing

While at uni this year, as I find myself getting bogged down in projects I often forget to do the things that are truly important as a practitioner. One of the main things I forget to do is life drawing. Over the summer I would like to commit myself to going to life drawing at the Fenton pub every Tuesday, but for now while I've simply had so much to do I've simply had to just make time for it whenever I can.

Life drawing at The Fenton has proved to be incredibly beneficial to my practice. To me nothing has better improved my drawing ability than life drawing. I'd say that I mostly animate and draw people and one of the most important things to me with animating people is creating realistic movement and a nice flow. Life drawing has really helped me to keep a consistency in the physicality and proportions in my characters. 

Voice Acting

Voice acting is something I very much discovered at university. Beforehand I knew what it was, but never felt like it was something I could do or knew how to get involved with. Well, of course at university level, we don't know many professionals so when we each needed a voice or dialogue for our animations we would simply use each other. As soon as I tried it I fell in love with it. I've always made strange noises and put on voices, but this was doing it professionally.

My work with voice acting began with me persuading my peers to let me voice a character in their animations. then the more characters I voiced and the wider the portfolio of different voice work I built up, the less I needed to ask people and the more people came to me.

One of my favourite characters to voice was Lord Keith for Brogan, Tess and Jay's animation, and their not in my year so it was really amazing to see that word of my willingness to voice act was beginning to spread. I wouldn't say I can voice act particularly well or for that matter act particularly well. But out of all parts of the animating process, voice acting is definitely my favourite and the more experience I gain from doing it, the more I'd like to pursue it alongside that of being an animator.

Learning the software Animate CC

To speed up my workflow for my Extended Practice I learnt the software Adobe Animate CC. I had been encouraged to teach myself this software by my peers who were all too aware of how slow my workflow is. Admittedly I had been hesitant to do this. The reason for this is because even though i too was aware that my workflow was inefficient, I liked the way I worked and i was comfortable with it, perhaps too comfortable. But it was when I was faced with the mammoth task of producing my Extended Practice animation that was set to be two and a half minutes long that I decided that if I were ever going to finish it and prove that I am easily adaptable, I needed to teach myself the software.

Through the use of the YouTube tutorial Draw with Jazza: Learning Animate CC and the book on learning Animate CC I was able to learn the software. It did take a little bit of time, but once i had learnt and was at a stage where I felt comfortable with e the software I felt like my workflow significantly sped up. Now I can use what I learnt with Adobe Animate CC and use the skills I have acquired with the software to sell myself to studios. A lot of animated shows that I really like use the software, for example The Amazing World of Gumball and Rick and Morty. It was also very satisfying to know that I had learnt a software that is industry standard that many acclaimed studios use. I'm at a point where I really want to learn anything that could have the potential to speed up my workflow and better sell myself.

Visiting Professionals: Tom and Henry Purrington from Golden Wolf

Tom and Henry Purrington are senior 3D artists at the animation studio Golden Wolf in London. I have admired the work of Golden Wolf for many years, in fact they were one of the first smaller animation studios that I learnt about. Before I was even doing an animation course, the studio was pointed out to me by a peer on art Foundation and I was alerted to their awesome animation that celebrates twenty years of Cartoon Network.

This animation instantly made me fall in love with the work the studio produces, vibrant, energetic and bursting with enthusiasm. And when I at the time scrolled through their catalogue of other work found that although it was all incredibly diverse, the quality of for example, just the animation was so very high.

  

They told us about the fundamentals of their studio; Rule 1: No egos. They spoke about how everyone at the studio views themselves as on an equal level to everyone else, no one views themselves as higher or lower. Secondly, there is no room for okay, I gained the sense from watching the talk that everyone puts in 110%, that is how the quality of the work is so high. Even though the workload that is expected of an animator at Golden Wolf seems incredibly high, you need to enjoy what you're making, often if an animator is not enjoying or getting any enjoyment out of the work they are producing, then it will show in the final product.

The guys gave us an incredibly valuable insight into how they produce the studios work. They showed us the ident they produced for the Guardians of the Galaxy Disney XD animated series. The final product is of an incredibly high quality with diverse and incredibly complex camera angles. The animation is incredibly complex yet fluid. To me as a 2D animator it boggles the mind to see something like this where throughout all the proportions of the characters stay completely consistent. How they animated it was by creating 3D rigs of all the characters, animating them and filming them with all the camera angles that will appear in the final product. Then they would pass on this demo footage to the 2D animators to use as reference material to create the final product.

The most useful points I took away from the talk was the pair's incredibly valuable insight into the perfect showreel. The showreel essentially needs to sell you. They would much rather see thirty seconds of beautiful imagery than two minutes of mediocre. I followed up this advice by asking them if they look for anything particular in a showreel, for example run cycles or action shots. They replied that they do not look for anything in particular, just avery high level of quality, for example physical movement in an animation that has weight to it.

Finding Potential Studios to Apply to Through the BBC Iplayer

As a career, I am more looking to work as a narrative based animator, rather than commercial, although this is an area that is becoming ever more intriguing to me. I was advised that a way I could go about looking for work in narrative based animation is through the BBC Iplayer website, in particular CBBC and Cbeebies.

So far I have primarily looked at the Cbeebies Iplayer. I would scroll down all the shows until I found one that I liked and of which I feel I would suit the aesthetic style of. Then I'd skip to the end credits where I'd be presented with the animation studios that developed the show.

The results I would get would often be quite intriguing. A lot of the time I found that it wasn't as simple as they just have one studio producing the show, often they would have multiple studios involved with different areas of production. Still, I felt like for me wanting to get into narrative based animation, this was the best way to go. And despite discovering multiple studios I had never heard of, I did come across ones I had heard of and became more an more informed as I begun to connect the dots one who works on what, if it's a 3D animated show, it sometimes was not surprising to find out who produces it, I might already know them as being a 3D based company and vice versa.

I would initially write down a list of every studio I found that came at the end of the credits of a show I'd like to work on. What stunned me was the sheer quantity of content that lay before me. Although this was slightly overwhelming, it was also very positive for me because it meant I had so much choice, furthermore this experience totally opened my eyes. The reason for this is because beforehand, if someone asked me if I wanted to work on a BBC animated show, I did originally think that meant applying through the BBC. This is a very naive opinion to have and I'm glad I don't think this anymore.  

Visiting Professional: Chris Luk

Chris Luk was a very enlightening individual. I feel I found the talk most rewarding because Chris is an ex student of Leeds College of Art and the animation course. Even though I know the course is very good and the university is one of the best for art in the country. It was nice to see a success story like Luk in person. So how did he get to work for the likes of Walt Disney in London and Cartoon Network? Well he said he was very lucky. Furthermore, his approach when looking for work was slightly different to how I would originally go about it. He said that usually when he would say in an email 'I'm looking for work...' he would usually not hear a response. However, if he found a studio he liked and liked the work they were producing, he would email them with his own work and ask for feedback. Generally it seems people who work in studios are pretty friendly and helpful to aspiring professionals so would reply. Then this feedback would lead to Chris getting to know the person on the other end, leading to opportunities.

Essentially he told us that he gained work experience at Disney by finding an obscure email address on their website, emailing to ask for feedback, and then asking if he could come down, of which they replied 'yes'.

He gave us advice on writing our CVs. Don't make them too long; most people do not want to look through four pages of writing, and do not over complicate it. He also actually showed us his personal CV and it represented everything he was talking about that I can now apply to my own CV. It was only a page long and was pretty simple in design, not basic, but not too flashy either.

I think the best advice I took away from Chris' talk is what he said about networking. And this is something I had thought before but it was almost like I was getting confirmation. Networking shouldn't solely be about you trying to get a job. It should be about making friends. The industry may seem like this big daunting thing, like we're fish in a tank thinking about the ocean, but in fact it is not as big as we think. A lot of people know each other and are friends, once again working in the industry comes down to two things, what work do you produce and what are you like to work with.

Applying for an Internship at Blue Zoo Animation Studio/their talk at Manchester Animation Festival

I won't be discussing every single studio I'm applying for as I think I will find myself often repeating myself. I do however want to talk about the studios that stand out against the others so I can explain why exactly I have decided to apply for them. Blue Zoo is one of those standouts. The reason Blue Zoo is a stand out is because I feel it is a heavily CG 3D studio and I would not consider myself a 3D animator, to the point where the 3D animation I did have in my showreel I was advised to take out for that reason of calling myself a 2D animator. However, Blue Zoo is an animation studio that I really like.

I remember first hearing about them when I went to their talk on their upcoming Virtual Reality came Hoodoo.

Before I saw this talk, I admittedly thought of VR of being something of a gimmick. I didn't really take it seriously and I most6 definitely did not think it was going to last. However, this talk completely changed my opinion. Hoodoo VR is an incredibly immersive experience where the player follows around a blue cat on top of a mountain that he explores, narrated by Danny Wallace. A simple premise, yet i feel a concept that lends itself perfectly to this platform. 

I enjoyed the talk for many reasons but in particular because of why they were making the game in the first place. It was not for a client, where much of their work is client based, Hoodoo is a passion project. Even though creating a VR game is obviously an incredibly time consuming and laborious process, the creators seemed to love making it and were very excited about how experimental it was.

The reason of calling myself a 'primarily 2D based animator simply did not seem like enough of a reason to not try to contact this studio. Furthermore, I was very excited to see that when I was applying for Blue Zoo I could categorise myself as a '2D Animator'. Just because I want to work as a 2D animator, does not mean I am against working on 3D projects. To me, it is the cause and the content that truly matters and if it is a project I genuinely like and Hoodoo is one of those projects. I know I need to be looking more specifically now but there is also a part of me that doesn't want to narrow myself. Even though I work primarily in 2D I am always open to learning new skills and would still like to animate an 11 Second Club animation using a 3D Maya rig for example. At the moment I feel I simply want to go after the studios I like, there are many that fit my specifications that I most definitely do not like.

Work Experience at Matter and Co.

I have written an in depth day-by-day blogpost of my experience of working at Matter and Co. that you can find in the relevant PPP folder that I am submitting.

Collaborating with Creative Advertisers on their brief 'Adidas Basketball Campaign'

My housemates Zeb and Jasper approached me to work on a brief with them as part of their Extended Practice module called 'Adidas Basketball Campaign'. This experience was incredibly rewarding to me in many ways, but firstly because it gave me the experience of dissecting a brief that isn't fully aimed at animators, in this case aimed at Creative Advertisers. Since it was not fully aimed at me, in that the brief was obviously not written for an animator, it was up to me to interpret it. The brief went as follows: 'Adidas Originals aim to revive their basketball offering and take back market share from Nike. Adidas have a rich heritage in basketball with many of the brands iconic silhouettes originating on the court before moving to streetwear and becoming fashion staples.'.

Zeb and Jasper explained to me my role which was to draw characters that have different personalities and character traits, for example Mr. Wildcard who had the character traits of being quite scruffy, yet still wore Adidas gear as apposed to Mr. Accessories who has all the latest gear.

They then presented me with their versions of 'character sheets' in which through the use of imagery and notes they could describe what each character's physical appearance needed to consist of, e.g. their shoes and their pose.

But apart from the information that was presented to me on these sheets, I had pretty much free rein to interpret the characters however I wanted. This was very enjoyable as I've known Jasper and Zeb for years and know they are very relaxed collaborators. I was working on this brief at the same time of being heavily into the production of my Extended Practice animation so the timing was not ideal, however Zeb and Jasper knew this so were very patient with how much time I devoted. 

The production flow was also very relaxed, I'd draw a character then give it to one of them to colour and place in the posters. However, we did hit a bit of a hurdle when they were informed abruptly that they needed to finish the brief by the end of the day. I understand this was an unforeseen circumstance that Zeb and Jasper had no control over but it did put me under pressure in terms of time. Nonetheless I was able to finish the work without needing to rush to what I feel is a very high standard. Below are the final designs.

All I handled were the line drawings of each character. I had next to nothing to do with what came after so when Jasper and Zeb showed me the finish products I was amazed. To me the final designs looked incredibly professional and reminded me once again of the skills other practitioners from other areas of the college possess. This is something I admittedly overlook quite a bit. When I spend most my working time in the studio with other animators, it'[s easy to forget that there are certain skills we simply do not possess and if we do possess them to a very basic level, we certainly do not possess them to a level of quality other practitioners do. I'd have never been able to do what these guys did with these designs. Dan, a Graphic Designer (who at the time I did not even realise was working on the brief) did an amazing job with the logos.

Logo designing is something that is so far out of my comfort zone that I'd be hesitant to ever attempt it. But here I'm very proud to see my work put into something that is bigger than myself. This brief was very different from something I would choose to do. Adidas is not necessarily a client I'd want to work for. They are so big and remind me of something the Golden Wolf brothers said about Nike that 'they're already cool, you can't really add anything to the brand that can boost them up'. I was very aware of this and nervous about it, but throughout my working on the project was reassured by what Jasper and Zeb expected of me.